European leaders to join Ukraine’s Zelenskyy for meeting with Trump
Global News
European and NATO leaders will join Zelenskyy in Washington Monday for talks with Trump on ending the war in Ukraine, with NATO-style security guarantees on the table.
European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the possibility of U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table.
Leaders from France, Britain and Germany are rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump’s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy’s side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter.
“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.
“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said.
Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Putin agreed at the meeting in Alaska with Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Zelenskyy, said “we welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the ‘Coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share.”
Von der Leyen was joined Sunday by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in saying they will take part in Monday’s talks at the White House, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte.
The European leaders’ demonstration of support could help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia.
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